Month: August 2015

Great harm is done by the public not understanding that evolution isn’t teleological. That is, it has no goal in mind. There’s no state of perfection it’s progressing towards. There’s no “more” or “less” evolved. If something survives and reproduces in a place relatively well, you tend to see more of it. Evolution is just…

Salon published a piece called Dear White America: I know it’s hard, but you have to acknowledge what’ s happening in this country. The commenters don’t feel the same. In practice, white people hate hearing about “white privilege.” The most recent comment starts like this: Let me tell you why terms like “white privilege” and…

To her credit, Nora Volkow, head of NIDA, published an op-ed in support of CBD research. It’s just that it doesn’t erase responsibility for standing in the way of medical progress this entire time. While it’s a remarkably reasonable document for having been written by the head of NIDA, it’s still insidious in a few…

This is a Vice mini-documentary about homeless people having life problems with synthetic cannabinoids in Britain: This is an introduction to pharmacodynamics, which explains the difference between full and partial agonists around 7:30: THC, which we know and love, is a partial agonist of the CB1 receptor. Synthetic cannabinoids are full agonists. If you were…

I used to spend a lot of time on the now-defunct LATOC message boards. It wasn’t meant to last. One of the forum regulars wrote this obituary for it: A half-decade or so ago, a young Lawyer from California created a very well-written and researched website explaining the concept of Peak Oil and the inevitable…